I saw the ad for Dark Elements on the front page and that got me thinking about these co-op expansions again. My group enjoys the game but there is often a sore spot between who ever plays the overlord and the other players. I think we might really enjoy the co-op if its done well. So I am looking for opinions. Are these expansions any good? Does it leave something to be desired? Are there glaring issues to be aware of? Is it a challenge or do you feel like the AI overlord is more of a pushover?

I have the first co-op expansion (Forgotten Souls) and definitely don't regard it as a pushover. It's tough (at least on me..).

I've the first two co-ops and have Forgotten Souls set up in the Game room. I like it for trying out heroes, , classes, weapons, and skills I may not have a chance to play otherwise. I enjoy the challenge of it and have yet beat the game. It holds me over until I can play the game with my friends. I guess I miss that the most about the game--the interaction, the head to head with a human OL when playing it. Hope this helps.

The challenge level is pretty decent for these expansions. However, I find Nature's Ire significantly more difficult than Forgotten Souls.

In fact, I'd even go as far as to say that it is unlikely that a group can beat Nature's Ire on their first run through, because you can't prepare for what you will end up facing and will thus be dependent on favorable luck.

For example, the first encounter alone is extremely difficult to pass if you start it at the end of the heroes' turn and if you don't have fast movement abilities that allow heroes with high might or perception to swiftly cross the water tiles and open the center barrels by turn 2.

You could still win it if you're lucky, but chances are you'll botch it, and even a single botched encounter usually kills the entire run, especially in a 4-hero game.

I like that aspect though, because it encourages replay and is a great way to stress test compositions.

One flaw I find in the co-op games though is that their design excessively favors the base classes and heroes. For example, the Thief is excessively useful in co-op games due to Sneaky. The party opens so many doors in the adventure that this adds up to like a dozen free actions by the end of the game.

The Runemaster is also heavily favored due to the AI monsters being really vulnerable to repeated blast attacks, unlike a smart AI that would stagger their monsters. Finally, heroic feats like Syndrael's make certain encounters far easier than they would be otherwise to the point that your odds of success increase significantly bringing her along.

A good 'hard mode' to try for experienced runners is to try a game using only expansion classes/heroes. That is tough!

I use random hero's when I play these, but I choose the classes, and the solo games can be very difficult for me.

I just play (unfortunately seldom) co-op adventrures =D

I pretty much agree with everything Charmy said.

For my part I see this product line as having a lot of potential, but we are not quite there in terms of variety and difficulty setting. Replayability is just so low at the moment, even if you select new heroes all the time.

So this is why I still value the D&D board games way over the D2E co-op expansions (the lack of human OL allows that comparison), just because of replayability as well as balance being very sketchy. D&D on the contrary is just a vast sandbox where you do everything you want, it's a hard game in the right setting and defeating it requires some serious collective effort. Which are things I´m personally looking for in a game like that.

But the D2E co-ops is also a growing product line (as opposed to D&D which still release games but it's always the same system all over again) and starting to include expansions, and hopefully incorporating non-base classes and heroes would be a pretty big leap in the right direction.

For now I see very little incentive for not playing "classic" D2E, because of the awesome human overlord mechanism, BUT for certain playgroups and certain moment in times full co-op games are just such a great choice if you don't want to experience the tension between two teams competing against each other. Giving the heroes versus Overlord game a temporary break, where all can join forces and play together, can be very nice, especially if you experience tensions in your normal D2E games.

One of my playgroups is a sucker for co-op games in hardcore difficulty settings, BUT without betrayer/traitor. It allows us to go nuts in discussions and give a great collective experience of a game.

But if I want to play D2E then I play classic mode by default. I don't have time for both, bearing in mind we play other games too. However if I cannot get my group to play D2E because of player attendance then co-op is definitely a way to play the game, as you have less constraints on the playgroup. You can plan for a normal campaign play and then if people don't show up you can fall back on the co-op expansion.

Solo play is probably a good way to test the various classes, but I don't have time to do that.

For now it looks like the D2E co-op expansions provide a decent experience but the low difficulty setting (unless you pick things randomly, which you probably should do actually) makes it less appealing to us.

For me it's still a wait and see.

I had nice times with the campaign mode but it was always difficult to find a committed Overlord (I also prefer to play a hero... ) and the cooperative expansions offered us a more viable solution to enjoy Descent (also in a reduced amount of time).

For my part I see this product line as having a lot of potential, but we are not quite there in terms of variety and difficulty setting. Replayability is just so low at the moment, even if you select new heroes all the time.

Unfortunately I have to agree with this statement and if we hadn’t developed our own variant for the coop games, we probaly would play only the D&D games (or coming back to Warhammer Quest ).

However the interest in coop more is continuing to increase; I am quite surprised by the list ( https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1353414/list-variants-cooperative-mode-updated-14042014 ) of already existing variants on bgg.

I hope ffg will finally take the chance and offer us an exhaustive and revised set of rules for cooperative adventures. From our experience in Forgotten Souls and Nature's Ire (and from what I can guess from the new expansion) I have the feeling they are still testing the coop mechanics.